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So, by now Black Panther is a bona fide hit, one of the biggest films of the year and on track to be one of the biggest films of all time frankly. As such a sequel is now pretty much all but inevitable. Indeed, our very idea of the superhero is probably going to have to start adapting to this new post-Black Panther age: it’s a milestone movie much in the same vein as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or Deadpool.
I get the unique sense Black Panther is going to basically be Marvel’s license to print money going forward into the 2020s so it’s time to milk this particular topic for all its worth by diving into the next big question for Black Panther: what do you do next? Obviously, anything is on the table and the events of Infinity War are probably going to reshape things quite a bit as well but I think I’ve got a few ideas for 7 characters we might see in Black Panther 2.
KLAW (Again)
If you saw Black Panther 1 you know what I’m talking about but if you haven’t spoilers to follow. So, in Black Panther Andy Serkis’ Ulysses Klaue, a villainous gunrunner from Age of Ultron, makes a return, now sporting a sonic cannon in place of a hand, similar to his comic book counterpart. Klaue gets killed around the midpoint of the movie as part of a scheme by the real antagonist Erik Killmonger but there’s no reason Klaue couldn’t return for a third installment in an even more comic book accurate form.
So this story is kind of two-fold, let’s start with the background. In the comics, Klaw is more or less Black Panther’s archenemy but he’s also made out of living sound. That’s a weird idea as would befit a character first popping up in the Fantastic Four comics and I get why they didn’t introduce him as a sentient sound wave.
However, given how inconsequential death tends to be in the Marvel universe having him return as living sound now seems like a much easier pill to swallow. What’s more, it’s been established in Black Panther that sonic vibrations can be used to negate vibranium’s properties so if some villain wanted the perfect anti-Wakanda weapon a living sound would be the perfect option, but we’ll dig more into that later.
BLACK PANTHER SHURI
Obviously, Black Panther’s tech genius sister Shuri is sure to be in the sequel film. Shuri was the break out of Black Panther and with good reason: she’s brilliant and deeply funny, instantly charming with a really unique and striking visual style that made her part of a whole host of great supporting characters in the film. However, in the comics, she isn’t JUST T’Challa’s genius little sister she also served as Black Panther herself, most notably during an attempted invasion of Earth by the Skrull and a destructive invasion of Wakanda lead by Dr. Doom.
I’m not sure we’ll see a full version of Shuri’s Black Panther costume in the next movie but Marvel does enjoy setting things up ahead of time and they’ve gotten similar range out of stuff like putting Pepper in Iron Man armor in Iron Man 3 or anytime they have Bucky wield Cap’s shield.
What’s more, Black Panther seems to have gone out of its way to establish the versatility of this new Black Panther nanotech armor so it would fit if they threw some of it on Shuri for an action scene or 2. What’s more, if it tracks well that’s already a ton of cash in merchandising and a set-up for more Black Panther films if Boseman ever leaves the lead.
WHITE WOLF
This idea was teased in the post-credits stinger of Black Panther, that Bucky Barnes might become the character known as the White Wolf. If you don’t remember in the MCU, Bucky was dropped off in Wakanda after the events of Civil War because he was worried his mind might still be compromised with Hydra passcodes and was hoping the Wakandans could repair him.
At the end of Black Panther, we see he seems to have recovered and is referred to as ‘the white wolf’ by the local children. The White Wolf was a Marvel anti-villain, I suppose, he was T’Challa’s adopted brother and wore a weird white version of the Black Panther costume. Honestly, his arc is real similar to Killmonger’s in Black Panther- a black-ops trained son of Wakanda spurned by its leadership and grown resentful in exile but still very much enamored with the idea of Wakanda and what it could represent.
Given the similarities to Killmonger, I doubt we’ll see the adopted brother version of White Wolf in the upcoming films and it does seem like they’ve gone to serious lengths for Bucky Barnes to be the new White Wolf. I don’t really know how this will gel with the possibility of Chris Evans leaving the Captain America role but it’d be weird if they set-up the name drop in a post-credits scene only to NOT follow up on it in future films. It would be pretty great to see Bucky running around with a cape and the all-white costume if only for the spectacle of it all.
THE THUNDERBOLTS
So these guys are who I was referring to earlier in the article when I was talking about Klaw. The Thunderbolts are basically Marvel’s answer to the Suicide Squad only somehow more optimistic and less optimistic, they’re a layered concept. They originally emerged as a team of supervillains trying to turn hero under the leadership of Baron Zemo before their name was taken over by a government operation using supervillains to hunt heroes who refused to register their secret identities. They’ve got a long and weird history but “shady US government hit squad” is their most common running identity and the one I’d expect if they were to show up in Black Panther 2.
My belief is that Black Panther 2 will specifically feature the US Government as the villains as that feels like the natural next step for this franchise. Given that such a plot would require a full-scale invasion of a country the US would need some serious firepower: hence the Thunderbolts.
They already have ties to Zemo, who’d be a natural leadership fit given he already killed one king of Wakanda, and you could have soundwave Klaw appear as a member as well. There are plenty of other characters with Thunderbolts connections circling the MCU lately like General Thunderbolt Ross’ Red Hulk identity along with numerous Netflix characters if they wanted to go that route such as Punisher, Elektra, Luke Cage, and Nuke.
JOSIAH X
So, here’s a character who demands an explanation so bad he’s basically holding us at gunpoint- Josiah X. His origin goes back to a comic I reviewed forever ago called Truth: Red, White, and Black, which revealed that before Steve Rogers the US tested unstable versions of the Captain America serum on unwilling black men, an idea meant to echo the Tuskegee syphilis atrocities. There was only one survivor of these experiments: Isaiah Bradley, unfortunately, he suffered severe brain damage from the proto-serum. His son, Josiah al Hajj Sadiq, decided to adopt a new version of his father’s original costume and shield and became a hero in his own right: Josiah X.
Though really a character more suited to his own Netflix show, Josiah X feels like a natural fit for the world of Black Panther as implied at the end of the first film. In the final moments, it was confirmed that T’Challa was launching a Wakandan aid push, setting up community outreach centers and such in various black hubs across America.
Having to contend with a local superhero like Josiah would be a natural conflict to arise out of that situation and could make for some very interesting conflict, especially as it might give T’Challa a chance to try and actually mentor Josiah before he becomes more of a Killmonger. What’s more, Josiah X is one of Marvel’s few premiere Muslim characters and it’d be pretty cool to see one in the films, especially after all the bizarre religious stuff in the first film.
RIRI WILLIAMS
I’ve actually seen a lot of folks suggesting Shuri should basically just also be Riri Williams, which seems like an incredibly reductive approach to both characters frankly. The Marvel cinematic universe is a big enough place to foster TWO smart black women. What’s more, Riri Williams, as a character, just isn’t compatible with the experiences of Shuri.
Part of what made Black Panther such a refreshing film was how much the character of Killmonger served as a counterpoint to the Wakandan utopia: he was a bucket of cold war on the technocratic perfection of Wakanda, a reminder that out in the real world systems are still designed to grind even the best and brightest black children down into nothing.
That’s a very different kind of story and character than you would get than with a literal princess like Shuri and, honestly, one Black Panther 2 is probably going to be in need of. Much like Josiah X, Riri Williams would be a natural fit for the format of Shuri and Nakia now spearheading Wakandan outreach in America and it’d be a really interesting place to build from if these new versions of Iron Man and Captain America emerged out of the original characters ashes in the Infinity War. The Marvel movies have excelled at embracing their own meta-ness so making Black Panther 2 literally about BP fostering a new generation of heroes who don’t even draw their visual inspiration from him could be a really clever approach.
STORM
Consider this my NEW “it won’t happen but if it did it’d be amazing so let’s play out the hypothetical” type entry for these lists. By now we’ve all heard about how Marvel is hovering over an acquisition of the entire Fox IP catalog in one of the biggest media buyouts of all time. Nothing’s yet been formalized but it’s looking pretty concrete and while there’s a LOT of unpleasant implications the deal brings with it you can explore those elsewhere because I literally have no power over the decisions of mass corporations so I’m going to try and look for a shred of comfort within their machinations instead.
Storm showing up in Black Panther 2 would be an absolute power move as a way to slowly introduce the X-Men and mutants into the MCU. Obviously, there’s a big problem that you can’t have the X-Men just APPEAR out of nowhere but setting them up individually over several films actually sounds like it could be an interesting plan, especially with how well the various individual X-Men can carry their own corners of reality. Logan would be the perfect fit for a Winter Soldier film, Colossus showing up in a Black Widow movie would blow minds, Deadpool hopping around through Spider-Man would be a riot, that kind of thing.
Storm was considered a goddess in Kenyan prior to joining the X-Men so exploring that parallel to T’Challa as the avatar of the Panther God would make an easy starting point. What’s more, Storm would be a natural ally in T’Challa’s quest to increase Wakanda’s positive impact on the world. Like I said, it probably won’t happen but if it did it’d make a lot of sense and be a real easy win/set-up for the Storm movie we should’ve already had by now.
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